A Virginia law limiting handgun purchases to one per month was repealed Tuesday, over the opposition of gun control supporters and survivors of victims in the Virginia Tech massacre.
Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell signed the bill into law after meeting with families of people killed or injured in the April 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. The families had hoped to persuade him to veto the bill, although they knew it was a long shot.
Andrew Goddard, whose son Colin was wounded at Tech, was at the meeting. He said the governor had previously said he would sign the bill and “it would have been very difficult for him to go back on it.”
Goddard, president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety, reserved his harshest criticism for legislators who passed the bill.
“They have not learned a damn thing,” Goddard said. Alluding to Monday’s school shooting that left three students dead in Ohio, Goddard said: “Here we are watching kids dying in other states, and we’re going to be a purveyor of firearms for other states.”
Lori Haas, whose daughter Emily was wounded in the shooting that left the gunman and 32 others dead at Virginia Tech, said she was disappointed by the governor’s action.
“Getting rid of the one-handgun-a-month law will make it easier for gun traffickers to purchase handguns in bulk,” she said in a written statement. “There have been too many tragedies in other states fueled by guns that come from Virginia, and this will only make the situation worse.”
Virginia Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William and sponsor of the repeal bill, said the one-handgun limit didn’t accomplish much for law enforcement.
“If you really want to get after gun crime, you get after people who use guns illegally. You don’t punish law-abiding citizens,” he said.
The 1993 law was a major legislative legacy of Democratic former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, passed when Virginia was a favorite armory for East Coast criminals. It never applied to rifles or shotguns.
The law was intended to stanch the flow of guns from Virginia to New York City and other metropolitan areas in the Northeast. In 1991, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that 40% of the 1,236 guns found at crime scenes in New York had been purchased in Virginia.
